


Belong

by writershapeholeonthedoor



Series: The Five Of Us [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Cute, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Feelings, Fluff, Gen, I'm Serious, Idiots in Love, Love, Romance, True Love, this is pure fluff from start to finish, this is so sweet that your teeth will fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 16:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20212948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writershapeholeonthedoor/pseuds/writershapeholeonthedoor
Summary: They have a different life, but they finally belong somewhere.





	Belong

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a Tumblr post, originally posted by the amazing @oh-8-4. You can find it here: https://oh-8-4.tumblr.com/post/183091340483/shoot-headcanon-2  
You can follow me on Tumblr, @writershapeholeonthedoor, and we can talk, or you can send me a prompt if you have one.  
Also, english is not my first language, so please let me know if there's anything wrong!

“Ma, wake up! It’s almost time!” Shaw was pulled out of a very good dream by small hands shaking her shoulder like an earthquake. She moaned, turning her body away from the loud voice and demanding hands, and buried her face in the wild tangle hair lying in the pillow next to her. The tip of her nose touched the back of Root’s neck and she took a deep breath, sighing when the smell of cinnamon and berries flooded into her lungs. “Ma! Don’t go back to sleep! We have to go outside or we’re going to miss it!”

“Your daughter is awake.” Root’s sleepy voice reached her ears way softer than the shouts behind her.

Shaw groaned out a whine. “Before sunrise, she’s your daughter.”

There was a pause, then Root’s body shook with a giggle. “You did not just use The Lion King on me.”

“You started it,” Shaw stated back, hugging the other woman closer to her warm body. “You can also blame your daughter for that because she makes me watch this movie at least twice a week.”

“Ma!” Speaking of...

Shaw huffed and turned around just enough to look at the impatient small brunette standing at her bedside. “Fine, I’m up. Why don’t you go grab some blankets and I will meet you outside?”

“OKAY!” Well, so much for a quiet morning.

Morning, Shaw mocked when she looked at the clock in her nightstand. It was five past 5 am, they should not be awake at that time. She sighed again, returning to her position spooning Root. “Why did I agree with that again?”

“Because you can’t say no to your kids.” She could hear Root’s smile in her voice, so she placed a kiss against the back of her shoulder. “And because you also want to do it.”

“True.” Shaw squeezed her waist once and rolled out of bed before she could change her mind and just go back to sleep – not that her daughter would allow that.

She was just putting her slippers on when she felt Root’s arms grabbing her from behind and pulling her back to bed. Shaw fell back in the mattress with a huff, relieved that she didn’t fall on top of the other woman or she could have hurt her. Root groaned something against her skin, but the older woman’s face was hiding behind her back between her and the mattress, so Shaw couldn’t understand her words.

The Persian woman was about to ask her to repeat the words when a child’s voice interrupted her. “Mommy! Let Ma go or we will miss the star!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Root raised her arms in surrender but didn’t move away.

Shaw turned her head to see their daughter standing in the bedroom’s door with both hands in her hips and tapping her foot in the ground angrily. Or as angry as a four years old could be. “Did you wake up your sister?” Shaw asked and got up before Root could embrace her again. She ignored Root’s moans from the bed and walked to their wardrobe to pull out a hoodie she could use to face the chill air from outside.

“Yes.” The girl nodded happily but then frowned. “But Gen said she’s not going.”

Shaw couldn’t blame Gen. The girl was thirteen now, she was starting to get in the phase where she wanted to sleep until noon and didn’t want to make the same things as her younger sisters because they were ‘lame’. Instead of telling the small girl to go call her again, Shaw walked towards the door and placed a hand in the soft wild chocolate-colored hair that belonged to the excited little girl.

“Come on, Lou.” She smiled at the girl and she returned an almost toothless smile back, before running away down the hall back to her room. Shaw couldn’t believe most of the time just how much the twins looked like Root. They literally looked like they were made in a copying machine, it could be a little scary sometimes, but mostly they were just a lovely sight.

Shaw entered the kid’s room still smiling and saw Louise already pulling warmer pants on – she was finally able to put her pants alone now and she didn’t let her moms do that for her anymore. The other girl, Jasmine, was still sitting in her bed looking quite lost, rubbing her eyes with a fist while looking at her sister with suspicion. Shaw chuckled to that. They could both be the spilling image of Root, but Jasmine had Shaw’s personality for sure, while Lou was just a mini Root all the way.

“Need help, buddy?” She asked, walking to the girl to help her slip in warmer clothes and into her shoes. Jasmine only nodded, clearly not wanting to talk yet. Yep, just like Shaw.

Ten minutes later, Shaw found herself standing in the rooftop of their building, trying to find the perfect spot to position their telescope. Gen had to make a scale model of the space to one of her classes a couple of months before and the twins were very excited to see it. They made their older sister explain every single detail at them and were fascinated with the subject since them. When they heard in the television that a comet – not a star-like Lou was calling it - was going to pass by and that they could see it if they had a telescope, they didn't drop the topic until Root got back home with the damn thing and Shaw assured them that she would take them to see it.

Shaw’s father was a space lover himself, she remembered that much, even if she was very young when he died. He liked to look at the stars at night and he always kept small notes on his calendars with dates of eclipses and other things. Shaw took comfort at looking at the stars after he died, but she didn’t make a habit of actually admiring them until the twins showed interest too. It was starting to become an activity the three of them could share together and she loved the idea. Root and Gen shared a passion for computer and technology in general that Shaw couldn’t understand, so she wasn’t a part of it. It was their thing, something they shared and that brought them closer, and Shaw was happy to see she was going to find that thing with the twins.

The woman looked behind her and saw Lou and Jas sitting side by side with a big blanket around their shoulders, looking up at the sky with a glint in their eyes that Shaw wished would never disappear. She would do anything to keep that happiness there forever. The large bunny slippers at their feet only made the vision cutter and Shaw looked at her own feet, where she could see a matching bunny.

“Ma, will it take too long?” Jas was finally awake and her excitement was quickly raising to reach her sister’s level.

“Just a few more minutes.” Shaw took a step to the side. “But you can look at the stars while we wait.” The girls ran to the telescope before Shaw was done talking and she shook her head fondly.

In moments like this, when things were quiet and she could relax, Shaw couldn’t help but think back to when she had nothing of this. When she didn’t even have Root. It was hard to believe it, but the woman found a way to interlace their lives in a way that Shaw had to think really hard to remember a time where the hacker wasn’t around. Not that she liked to think about it, but yet.

They decided to change their lives after Gen showed up at the front door of their apartment one night, holding a small bag and her laptop. It was hard at the beginning, especially to Root. Her connection with the Machine was much more... intimate, as she put numerous times, and it was a very important thing to her. Really important. She was only able to start ignoring the voice in her head after the twins, but Shaw was proud of her nonetheless.

But there they were. Shaw still had to pinch her arms sometimes to make sure it wasn’t a very long simulation.

“Ma, I can see it!” Lou shouted, pointing her small finger at someplace at the sky. Jas, who was looking through the telescope at the time, moved her face away to follow her sister’s finger with her eyes, just as Shaw did the same.

It was nothing but a point in the middle of the stars, a little brighter, but Lou was right. “Take a look at it, then.” She waved her hand towards the telescope and the girls quickly moved back to it.

Shaw ignored her own wish to look at the comet and just watched as her kids took turns placing their coffee-colored eyes at the telescope. She was so absorbed that she jumped when a pair of thin arms slid in her waist from behind. A forehead was placed in the middle of her back and she relaxed.

“Decided to join the living?” Shaw joked.

Gen sighed heavily, almost like she was carrying weight in her shoulders that were consuming all her energy. “Mom made me.” She didn’t remember when the girl started to call them like that, but she didn’t particularly care that she did.

“I did not.” Root was walking to them with two fluff blankets in her arms and Gen let Shaw go to grab one to herself. “I bought your presence, just like Fusco told me teenagers like.” The hacker smiled and threw the last blanket at Shaw’s shoulders. “You can eat extra ice cream tomorrow, remember that.”

Gen mumbled something while walking to sit beside her sisters with a tired Bear following her close, but Shaw didn’t felt like correcting her for that right now. She was a pre-teen and it wasn’t even 5:30 am yet, Shaw could see her point. Instead, the marine sighed and slide her arm around Root’s waist, pulling her closer so they could share the blanket. Their bunny slippers bumped together and Shaw rolled her eyes when Root tried to start a slippers fight with her.

“You know...” Root whispered after a while. She had turned her head so her lips were brushing against Shaw’s ear and the other woman squeezed her waist in encouragement for her to keep talking. “I had a really hard time feeling like I belong for a while.”

Shaw clenched her jaws together and closed her eyes. Root’s breath was hot against her face, so was the arm around her shoulders and the lips in her ear, and was hard to break these calm feeling with those heartbreaking words. She remembered the first time Root talked to her about it, six years prior, even if it felt like a lifetime ago.

“Actually, Sameen, I’ve been hiding since I was twelve. This might be the first time I feel like I belong.”

At the time, sitting by the woman’s side on the couch, Shaw remembered wanting to say something, anything really, that would make Root feel like she understood, that she agreed with her, that she did in fact belong somewhere – there, with her. But, instead, she had leaned her body a little closer, only slightly, when her eyes damped. And then Root grabbed her hand, entwined their fingers, and stared straight at Shaw’s eyes.

_ She knows _ , Shaw realized. _She knows how I feel, she knows I want to say something, she even knows what I want to say_. But Root also didn’t say a thing. She just lifted Shaw’s hand to her lips and placed a delicate loving kiss to the rough knuckles. Somehow, she always knows what I’m thinking.

Years down the road and Root still had the same power – a superpower, the hacker joked once. “There’s not a day since our last talk where I ever felt that way again.” Root placed a gentle kiss in her temple and Shaw would have blushed if anyone else could see them. “I belong here.”

In a very small apartment, located in a very old building, with a leaking pipe in the bathroom and a dripping tap in the kitchen, with an old Bear who snored way louder than he used to, a pre-teen with criminal tendencies and two energetic little girls who loved space. And with Shaw.

“Me too.”


End file.
